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User blog:Quiksilvr/The date-time synchronisation error and what you can do about it
EDIT'' ''(28 July 2015): ''I was going through my blog figuring whether I should add anything to simplify things further, and found that it is already so long now that it almost put me to sleep. :p'' So I realised that it needs a shorter version, a sort of summary. And here it is. The short version: '' ''"'The time you spend offline away from/ in the game between the last time you were online and the next time you would be online, is erroneously deducted from servicing countdown timer of all cars that you have put in servicing during this time"'' ''Ironically, while this 'feature' supposedly forces you to be online more often than you may like to be, if you understand how to make use of it, you'll find yourself playing offline more often than you intended to! This is because of a bug inherent to the update v3.5.2 and related to the server sync process. And yes, it can help you progress in the game quicker than you think. I've added a short video at the very end of the blog, and you might want to skip to that if you are only interested in the "how" of the method, not the "why", If the "why" interests you however, here is the long version! '' So I, like all the other guys who are hooked on to RR3, was terribly frustrated by the things we didn't know about while signing up for the update, like the one I want to address currently. Apparently EA/ Firemonkeys have decided to play watchdog and keep an eye on our servicing practices through their servers. There was confusion, initially, when people thought it was a bug but then someone here posted a screenshot of FM's response to his query on fb saying that it's a new feature they have implemented. Naturally, I was outraged like the rest, as we should have been made aware of it in the 'What's new in this update' column before we chose to update the app. Day before yesterday, I came across an anomaly in this server sync process, that I thought that can be exploited and I put it across in a couple of threads. But surprisingly, no one seemed to be able to replicate my results. I went over it again today, and I've finally deciphered what was going on. Before I tell you what to do to take advantage of this 'so-called-feature', here is how the server keeps account of your car service schedule. You put your car on servicing and your device, if online, intimates the server about the same, which makes a note of it. So while your device starts counting down the minutes till your car is fully serviced, the server is performing a twin countdown. And the programming is such that the server won't allow for the servicing to complete until the countdown on the server has run down to zero. And since none of us can influence the server's time-keeping, theoretically, we can't tamper with service times by changing time locally on our device. This is also why many of us would have experienced that sometimes the countdown timer freezes if we are offline or temporarily disconnected from the internet. But once we go back online, the countdown syncs with the server countdown again, and we get our car serviced back to us on time, if it's due. So it's a harmless feature, or so FM would have us believe. It's not like that if a car takes x minutes for servicing, we have to be online for the entire duration of x minutes. You can be offline for a while, and come back online anytime after x minutes have passed and claim your serviced car. But the server ensures that no matter what we do, we can't get back the car before x minutes. A pretty solid way to stop us from cheating..or is it? This is where the error prompt comes in. The moment your device is not able to reach the servers, you gets this thing flashing on your screen, telling you that the sync has been interrupted. And herein lies your oppurtunity. The moment the servers are in the dark, they have no idea of what you are doing in the game. And when the game does go back online, it has a stack of data of what you have been doing all this time, that it passes on to the servers. Among other things such as your race statistics, what races you ran, what trophies you won, and how much R$ and fame you accrued, it also hands over the list of cars queued up for servicing, but not WHEN the car was put on servicing. And this is the important bit here. Say, for example, you want to race the Porsche 919 Hybrid 2014 on the 10 lapper of LeMans in Endurance Kings, which takes slightly under 30 minutes, and then you put it on servicing which should take you a further 02 hours. Normally, whether you race online or offline, nothing changes. But now because the servers are calling the shots, and not your device, you can fool the system if you race offline. Because the moment the server reconnects with your device, and sees that your Porsche is in queue for servicing, it doesn't listen to your device telling it that the servicing needs 2 hours. Instead, the servers decide that they must count down from the moment that they lost contact with your device, so as not to cause a time keeping error. So if you have been racing offline this entire time, the time that you spent offline including the time you were racing also gets counted in the service time-keeping, and you have to wait that much time less. So, if you went offline just before the race, and took 28 min to complete the 10 lapper, put it on servicing, and then went online, you'll see that the countdown timer now shows ~1h 30 min instead of 2h that was counting down while device was offline a minute ago. "All this is great, but how does it help me?!!", you might ask. This knowledge doesn't let you farm additional gold coins, for sure, but it lets you save time. Consider a situation where you want to race a bunch of cars, of which car X has the maximum servicing time of 90min. If you choose to race offline for 90 minutes, you can race all these cars within this time period, multiple times if the service condition allows for it, and get back the cars fully serviced instantly by going online after the last race, even if car X was the last car you raced and put on servicing just before going online. Say, for instance, you can't help but go offline for 6 hrs (Work, sleep, commute/travel, movies- take your pick), when you come back to RR3, don't go online right away. Race all your races, and put them in servicing. And then go online. Since none of the cars in RR3 have a service interval of 6 hrs ( The max is 5h 25min, I think), you'll see that all your cars have been magically delivered back to you the moment you go online. Here is how to do it in a step-by-step manner: 0: Give the game a rest! You need to build up a reserve time for servicing before you can utilise it. And your reserve starts ticking the moment you quit the game or go offline. You need to be offline atleast as long as your target car's service time. (The target car is the one with the longest service time, which you want to be instantly serviced for racing again) For example, let's settle on Porsche Hybrid 2014 as our target car for this algorithm. ... Initiate Step 1 two hrs (service interval of Porsche 919 hybrid 2014, our target car in this example) after quitting the game/last online gameplay. Step 1: Go offline and launch the game, or force close and reopen the game if it's already running. Ensure that you are offline before you launch the game. The aforementioned error prompt that flashes on your screen at this time confirms that you are disconnected from the servers. If the servers manage to sync with your device before you start racing or while you are at it, your servicing reserve time is lost! That means NO cloud save!! So save your game before step 0, if you wish to. Step 2: Race the cars (with a service interval of 2 hrs or less) that you want, as many times as you want and in any order that you want, including the Porsche Hybrid. Remember to put the car on servicing after you are done with it. It doesn't matter if you put them on servicing at separate times or together, as long as you are still offine. '''EDIT: I've come to know, since I wrote this blog, that not everyone has got the option of servicing unlimited number of cars at a time, like a few of us do. So if your game lets you service a maximum of three cars (or less), you should race only that many cars, and put them all in servicing before going online, if you want them all serviced together instantly Step 3: After the entire lot of cars have been put on servicing, quit the game and force close it. Step 4: Restore net access to your device, and relaunch the game while online. You'll see that the cars have all been fully serviced, and available for another round of racing! This loophole can be best exploited on the go, if you are planning a batch of long races, where instead of waiting you can keep racing offline for two or three hours on Le Mans ( An hour yields approximately 20 laps racing with a LMP/ ~16-18 laps racing with other cars) and have atleast some of them returned back to you instantly for re-racing, except for the ones which take longer to get serviced, more than the two/three hours that you just raced. And just to reiterate, if you have been offline anytime for five-and-a-half hours or more, any and all cars you put on servicing before you go online, will be instantly serviced! In the end, it's not the algorithms that take you the furthest, it's the knowledge you possess. So if you have truly grasped what has changed with the server intervening with your gameplay, you can adopt your gaming pattern in ingenious ways to benefit you, ways that perhaps others haven't thought of yet. I'll give a couple of scenarios: Scenario 1. I regularly use Endurance Kings bonus series in Legends block to farm fame, since I've nothing much left in the game to do, which happens with most guys by the time they cross driver level 150. I've the three LMP's that I race in the 10 lapper, since the other two Porsche RSR's are a joke in this subseries. So I used to race them once a day, and made it a routine, which takes almost 90 minutes of my day. And as the Toyota takes the longest, 5h 25m, for servicing, I'd normally not reconsider a second batch of racing for the same day. But if I wanted to level up quickly, I'd put them in servicing, and come back after 6 hrs to play for another 90 min. But of course, that means I've RR3 on my mind for most of the day. Now, with this update, I can play for three hours at a time, and I don't have to obsess over the servicing times! All that I need to do is after I put the LMP's on servicing at the end of my race day, I set a countdown timer/alarm on my phone to alert me after 6 hours. By that time, all the three LMP's would have been fully serviced. So I briefly go online, launch the game, free up my LMP's from servicing and quit the game. It only takes a minute, so it's not much of a bother. And what it does, is build up reserve service time, so that next day when I open the game, I've more than 6 hrs of reserve service time and my LMP's ready to race even if I'm offline. I race the first batch of races while offline and then use my reserve service time by going online and instantly servicing my cars for a second batch of racing. And then after putting them on servicing after the second batch of racing, I set a countdown timer/alarm, and the cycle starts again. Scenario 2. This is a less encountered scenario, where I've lots of time to kill and not much else to do. So I open up RR3,as I'm bored. I just quit the game about an hour ago, and all of my 2014 LMP's are still in servicing. But I'd been racing offline for 90 minutes before quitting. So adding that reserve service time of 90 minutes to the last hour that I've not been playing RR3, I have almost two-and-a-half hours worth of service time. Enough to free up the Porsche 919 Hybrid 2014, if I go online right now, which I do. Also, as soon I free up the Porsche, the ~2hr 30min of reserve service time acts on the Toyota and the Audi too, which now show ~3h left for servicing. I go back offline after this, and by using a gold coin to hire the mechanic ( even better if he is available for free!), I race the Porsche twice in the 10 lapper for the next hour or so. After that, I start racing the 2015 LMP's in Endurance Champions. I don't like Endurance Champions as much because of the rolling start in the last three cup races (the 8/9/10 lappers), and because apart from my Audi E-tron which is upgraded to handle it, the other two LMP's give me a hard time in the 10 lapper. Still, between the three of them, I manage to draw out about 75 min of gameplay, by employing Audi for the 10 lapper, the Nissan for the 9 lapper and the Porsche for the 8 lapper. After putting them on service, I go on to Classic Ferrari showdown where I've the 4 lapper cup race in the last tier. I race with both F40 and F50, which takes about 30 min when put together, accounting for the race time plus the in-game transition. By this time, I've been racing offline for almost 3 hours, which is more than enough to free up the remaining two 2014 LMP's from service. And here comes the kicker! If I don't quit the game and manage to keep the device awake this entire time/ pause it only long enough not to allow the device to sleep, the countdown timers on the 2014 LMP's are still running faithfully since I last went online 3 hrs back, and free them up from servicing when the counters expire, whether I go online or not. If I want to quit, I go online and all the cars, I have used thus far, are serviced instantly, as none of them require more than 3 hours, which I've already accumulated in reserve by racing offline. If I want to continue racing, I stay offline as I've got ~60 min worth of racing to do, racing the two 2014 LMP's (The Toyota and the Audi) on the 10 lapper. After that I put them on servicing and set a countdown timer/alarm. And the cycle starts again :) Here is a short video walking you through the steps: Instant servicing method Let me know how it worked out for you. Cheers! Category:Blog posts